So I stole a cop’s car. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I didn’t bother to tell Jesse what I was going to do. He would either insist on coming with me, which would be dangerous for him, or insist that I needed to go to the hospital first, which would be dangerous for everyone at Hair of the Dog. And there was no way in hell I wasn’t going. Eli was at the bar, and if it was Will calling instead of him, then Eli had probably ingested the wolfberry.
As I drove I tried to remember what Olivia had told me about the effects of that strain of nightshade: it caused the werewolves to completely lose control of both the human and the wolf sides. They couldn’t keep from changing back and forth, over and over, which was excruciatingly painful. They attacked humans at will, which was out of character for both real wolves and the shapeshifters, who preferred to hunt deer and rabbits. Most wolves who ingested wolfberry had to be shot. The lucky ones just lost their minds and spent years recovering. The good news was, all of that was caused by werewolf magic interacting with the herb’s magic, so if a null like me could get close enough, he or she could stop everything. Olivia had once said that the only two ways to stop a werewolf who’d ingested wolfberry were a null or a silver bullet.
Olivia. She had done this. I didn’t know how yet, but unlike the scene at Kirsten’s house, this felt like classic Olivia: a big, messy strike at someone I loved, designed to cause maximum damage with no regard for bystanders. I can hurt you whenever I want; that was the message. No one is safe from me. I worked to keep my breathing even as I drove. I had to stay calm. I had to be able to get in there and do this. I wasn’t going to help Eli if I couldn’t keep my shit together. I bit down on a burst of hysterical laughter, my back aching from the effort. I was so past keeping anything together.
I blew through the traffic and only stopped for a single red light, because I wanted to take the opportunity to dig through Jesse’s glove compartment. I was rewarded, though: I found a great big bottle of extra-strength Advil and shook out four pills. I swallowed them with a flat soda that was in Jesse’s cup holder, and then sped on to the bar.
I parked right out in front without bothering to see if it was even a legal spot. As I ran to the entrance, I saw a thin figure on the sidewalk in a defensive crouch, like she expected someone to run up and shove her over. I squinted against the streetlight and recognized Anastasia, an African-American woman in her late twenties. She was a werewolf and one of Will’s part-time bartenders. He must have stationed her out here to let me in and keep everyone else out.
That made sense, but she was shaking like a leaf. I crouched, very carefully touching her wrist. “Ana?”
Her gaze met mine for an instant, and then she looked away. “Will ordered me to stay out,” she said, her low voice clouded with shock and grief. “My girlfriend’s in there, but he said I had to leave, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t stay.”
Ouch. I understood that she was being literal. She couldn’t go in. As the alpha, Will can control the wolf half of his pack members, but he’s a good guy and doesn’t usually push them. This was probably the first time he’d flexed his power over her, and she wasn’t taking it well.
“Who’s in there, Ana?”
She swallowed. “Some customers. Will. And Lydia.”
“Which wolves?” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. “Who took the wolfberry?”
“Eli,” she said. “And Caroline.”
I didn’t wait for further explanation, just rose carefully—the Advil was already helping, but my back was still stiff and tender—and stepped past Anastasia, into the bar.
The door opened into a tiny alcove, a few feet away from the main bar area. As soon as I stepped all the way into the alcove, I froze and looked down. I was standing on a human hand.
I managed not to yelp but lurched backward, almost slipping in a long smear of blood. When I was steady I pressed my back against the door, which had closed behind me, straining to see in the dim bar lighting. There was a body taking up most of the alcove, a woman lying on her stomach, pointed toward the door as though she were trying to leave. I recognized the short, dark hair, the sweeping, tilted nose. Caroline. A strangled sob escaping my throat, I bent at the waist, spotting at least two bullet holes in her back. Silver bullets.
“Scarlett?” Will’s voice whispered.
Later, Scarlett. Mourn for her later. I held my breath and stepped around Caroline’s corpse into the main room of the bar. Hair of the Dog was in shambles. There was broken glass everywhere, from dozens of framed pictures that had exploded off the walls. It looked like someone had swept an arm around the room, knocking everything violently to the floor, and then rolled around in the broken glass and shaken like a dog. Which was probably more or less what had happened. The smell of blood was overwhelming, and I saw that the dark-colored floor was shining in places. A lot of places. I counted four other bodies on the floor, that I could see.